


A Thousand Times Goodnight

by newmrsdewinter



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Happy Ending, beta'd but I will reap the consequences of my choices regardless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:34:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28858182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newmrsdewinter/pseuds/newmrsdewinter
Summary: The daughter of a foolish margrave embarks on a quest to break the wretched curse that bewitches her one true love. A Dimimari retelling of the Grimms' fairy tale, "The Singing, Springing Lark."
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Marianne von Edmund
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	A Thousand Times Goodnight

In the bleak, snowy forests of Faerghus, there was once a girl who ventured into the den of a stone lion. 

One moon had passed since Marianne departed Port Edmund to journey to that haunted wood where the lion dwelled. A dead lark was strung over her shoulder the entire way— proof of kill, but not by her hands. Marianne had suffered cruelly for her father’s foolishness. Though she hadn’t drawn the fateful arrow, she was the one who was forced to reckon with the consequences.

With funeral bells tolling in her heart, her feet came to a dead halt in a clearing at the center of the forest. At the end, a fearsome lion statue guarded a foreboding castle. The thicket rustled, and her courage failed as the sky darkened. Moonlight streamed through the clearing. When she blinked, the statue had vanished. 

A shadowy presence loomed behind her. Her heart stuttered in her chest. However, it wasn’t a pair of jaws that closed upon her — a heavy fur mantle dropped onto her shoulders, belonging to a handsome stranger with sorrowful, blue eyes.

“Who are you?” he asked hoarsely. 

“M-Marianne von Edmund,” she whispered. “My father — he sent me as remuneration for the lark he killed.” 

He recoiled, horrified. “He sent you? His own daughter?”

“Who else could it be?” Marianne asked, bewildered.

He shook his head. “Not who, _what_. In exchange for the lark, I asked him to surrender the most valuable thing he owns.”

The wind howled; the snow-streaked gale froze the tears upon Marianne’s cheeks. _All fathers are fools_ , she thought despairingly, but deep down, this was something she had always known. 

Wordlessly, the strange man regarded her, awaiting her next move. With betrayal weighing heavily in her heart, Marianne departed, but not before he reached out to stop her. 

“Marianne, wait!” 

She halted, both puzzled and intrigued by the sincere panic in his voice.

“Please stay for a night before you return home. I cannot abide the thought that you might freeze to death for a fool’s errand.” His face crumbled when she was too frightened to muster a response. “Forgive me. It was never my intention to eat you.” 

Marianne, lost in the deep-blue pools of his eyes, was disarmed by his kindness. “But….the lark that my father killed….I don’t know what to offer you in return. ” 

He reached for her hand. She surrendered it without question. He led her up the staircase to the castle, where torches lit their way with every step they climbed. 

“Nonsense,” he declared. “The pleasure of your company is more valuable than any lark’s song.” 

His name, he said, was Dimitri. 

* * *

One day turned into a fortnight, and a fortnight turned into a season. Heedless of the world she left behind, Marianne wintered in the castle with her lion prince, sleeping by day and rising with the moon every night. She buried the tiny seed of her love deeply in the depths of her heart because she feared it would bloom the day he would finally ask her to leave. Every stolen look they shared in his rose garden was a goodbye; every touch was a painful reminder that their time together would soon come to an end. 

Once spring melted winter’s frost, she found Dimitri standing at the battlements, gazing at the stars' twinkling splendor in the cloudless sky.

“Such faithful friends they are, the stars,” he said when she approached him. “May I tell you their stories?” 

Marianne listened, enchanted by the tales Dimitri wove with the heavenly bodies: the shield, the knight, the knave, and the heroic lives they led, now immortalized by the Goddess. Dimitri spoke of his friends with a yearning so palpable that they must have been alive in this life or the past. 

A rush of pity swelled Marianne’s heart. “How long have you been cursed?” 

“Long enough,” he whispered hoarsely. “But I have been selfish for much longer — selfish and truly abominable for wasting your time. Marianne, you must leave before the rise of the Great Tree Moon. It’s unfair for me to ask —” 

Marianne hushed him before his voice cracked from emotion. “Dimitri, do you cherish my company?” 

His breathing went very still when she rose to her tiptoes to press an airy kiss to his lips, then to his cheeks, one by one. 

“Yes,” he breathed, wrapping his arms around the small of her back, and trailing his lips down her neck to drink in her warmth. “Goddess, yes, Marianne, I do.” 

“Curses can be broken,” she whispered, hope fluttering in her heart. “My love for you cannot. Do you truly think me so shallow that I see you as the lion you are cursed to be, and not the man that I love?” 

His expression softened when tears misted her eyes. “Tell me what I must do to be worthy of you.” 

“I need no magic words,” she replied, before sealing their promise with a kiss. 

With no priest to marry them, they exchanged vows under the moonlight in the same clearing where they first met. In the months that followed, Marianne careened under a wave of love so overwhelming that she never questioned the curse that bound her husband to stone. 

_I have no desire to return home, and please don’t think to beg me_ , Marianne wrote to her father. _I have found happiness here, and I could not bear to leave my lion a moment too soon_. 

But when an Almyran scroll arrived in the post, she was astonished to find that it was a wedding invitation that tempted her back home, not the salty breezes of Port Edmund. Hilda didn’t need to threaten to drag her back to the Alliance; Marianne was glad to go, but not without Dimitri. 

“Come with me,” Marianne pleaded. “Claude and Hilda will love you, I promise.” 

Dimitri turned ghostly pale. “I can’t.” 

“Only for a season. Just one!” 

He shook his head despairingly. “Marianne, _please_.” 

“Why?” she asked, finally voicing the question that has eternally plagued her conscience. “What happens if you’re touched by sunlight?” 

His voice was anguished. “I’ll transform into a mindless beast, a stranger to you for five years." 

“Five years!” Marianne echoed. But she banished her misgivings, kissing a promise upon his cheek. “Fear not, my lion. I’ll protect you from the sun.” 

Finally, Dimitri acquiesced. They traveled to Almyra together, sleeping by day and journeying at night. The Margrave reserved them an apartment in the palace that shuttered all sunlight, but in a misguided attempt to free his daughter, he secretly replaced the door with a splinter so slight that it even escaped Claude’s notice. 

The wedding was a sumptuous affair. Marianne’s heart sang when Claude lifted Hilda’s veil, but she kept a watchful eye at the window, at the sun rising to its highest peak, impatient for the ceremony to end. Across the palace, her worst fears were confirmed when sunlight finer than a skein of thread seeped through the splinter in the door.

Panic seized her heart like a sixth sense. Deaf to Hilda’s protests, Marianne rushed back to the apartment, and thrust the door open, where she found a sorrowful griffin sitting under the harsh Almyran sun. 

“Oh,” Marianne breathed, falling to her knees. “Oh, Dimitri….” 

Without warning, the griffin flew out the open door. A feather drifted from its plume and something wet fell on her cheek. She touched it; her finger came away red. Scrambling to her feet, she followed the griffin out into the corridor, where it flew again and lighted upon an eave closest to the window. Another feather fell into her waiting hands, and with it, another drop of blood. 

The griffin regarded her solemnly. 

_Five years_.

A feather and a drop of blood would guide every step she’d take. 

_Leave or stay_.

Marianne met the piercing blue eyes of the griffin who was once her husband. She straightened her spine. Casting away all the trappings of her former life, she followed the griffin into the desert. 

* * *

At the end of the first year, the griffin had flown across the Almyran desert to the warm seas that lapped the cliffs of Adrestia. By the third year, Marianne had traversed the entire length of Fodlan on foot, tracing the ley lines carved by the moon and stars as they crept from one horizon to another in the ceaseless heavens. 

The most crimson sunsets were in Duscur, and the most brilliant ones were in Gronder, where Marianne learned the profane history that bled into the soil that refused to till crops on the field. In the Kingdom, she wove an azure mantle with the griffin's black feathers to ward away the frigid nights in Fhirdiad, where she prayed before somber, marble statues of Dimitri’s ancestors. 

By the fourth year, Marianne scarcely recognized her own reflection when she leaned over the hull of a ship sailing to Sreng. The woman whose face rippled in those crystalline waters had sea glass for eyes, and they were set in a face that was thin, drawn, and wild, framed by hair that fell past her feet. In some ways, Marianne had been enchanted by Dimitri’s curse too, transformed into a stranger who made peace with the world she had once feared and cast away. 

After five years had passed, the trail ended on the loneliest, uppermost peak in Dagda. Marianne pinned the last feather into her mantle, but upon glancing north, the griffin was already lost. 

“No!” she cried, searching the mountainside for any sign, any clue in the underbrush. “One more, only one more feather and —” 

She collapsed, weeping bitter tears until there were none left to cry. At dusk, she lifted her face to the stars Dimitri had once cherished, where a voice spoke a glimmer of hope into her despairing soul. 

_My dear, brave girl_ , said the Blue Sea Star. _For five years, I have guided you, and I shall guide you once more. Take this and open it in the hour of your greatest need_. 

A delicate, crystalline locket fastened itself around Marianne’s neck. With Sothis as her lodestar, she journeyed to Zanado, where the saints were said to dwell. 

“Have you seen my griffin?” she asked the Four Winds blowing across Fódlan. 

_No_ , answered the Immovable One, and the Windcaller also murmured his dissent. Their voices led her to Lake Teutates, where she pulled a magnificent bow from the watery depths. From there, she traveled to the Rhodos coast. 

Atop the cliffs where Saint Cethleann was rumored to sing, a playful breeze that carried spring’s sweetness caressed Marianne’s face, finally bringing her heart’s desire. 

_I have seen your love. He is under enchantment again at the Silver Maiden. Defeat the sorceress who cursed him, and only then will he be redeemed_.

Marianne tightened her grip upon her bow. “I must make haste.” 

_My gift to you shall be a pair of wings_. 

Marianne mounted the pegasus that emerged from the clouds, and its wings beat strength and conviction into her weary, world-worn heart. Upon reaching Arianrhod, the sky was alight with sunbursts and fire. At the very center of the smoking field, a living, breathing lion fought a losing battle against a terrible serpent. 

All the happiest moments of Marianne’s life took place with the moon as her witness; it only stood to reason that her worst fears should be realized under the sun that transformed her husband. 

Fear propelled Marianne into action. Without thinking, she opened Sothis’ locket. Silver light poured from the inside, blinding the serpent. Enraged, it reared back, but not before Marianne drew her bow and fired a single arrow into its eye.

With a thundering crash, the serpent fell, releasing the lion from its coil. The dust settled, revealing Dimitri as his true mortal self. He was gravely injured, bleeding out into the dirt. 

“No!” Marianne cried. She dismounted the pegasus, rushing to cradle him in her arms. She tipped an elixir down his throat, praying for Sothis to grant her one last wish. 

At long last, Dimitri stirred back to consciousness, coughing and drawing haggard breaths. He gazed at her through bleary eyes. “I know you. I know your face….it’s you, Marianne, isn’t it?” 

“Yes,” she whispered, nodding fervently, almost delirious from relief. “Yes, Dimitri, it’s me!” 

His face alighted with wonder and recognition, but anxiety too, as he cupped her cheeks with both his hands, searching her eyes for something he must have feared was no longer there. “For five years, you followed me…..” 

Tears shimmered in her eyes. “Every step of the way. When you vanished from that mountaintop, I almost lost hope. I spoke to the stars, the wind, and….” 

All his life, Dimitri was cursed into one form after another, never pausing to consider the changes. He had told her the story of his life through their travels across Fodlan, and Marianne had found meaning in hers. The enchantment had transformed them both into different people. Had his heart changed? Did he still remain true? 

But the moment his lips curved into that crooked smile she loved so much, she knew she had no cause for doubt.

“I thought you had given up,” Dimitri confessed. “But every night, I would hear your lovely voice in my dreams, weaving tales of all the wonders you’ve seen….Marianne, for the rest of our lives, you’ll only know me as the man who loves you. I promise.” 

It’s true that happily ever afters depend on where the story ends — but this, Marianne thinks, stealing Dimitri’s lips in a searing kiss — this happiness will last forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Posted mostly to remind myself that yes I can write a story under 2500 words, so now I have no excuse to procrastinate on my other projects. 
> 
> To the beta team, if you are reading this: I am a COWARD. Y'all know that Dimitri was supposed to turn into dust in Marianne's arms, but I just. Could not bring myself to write an angsty ending for the fic that was supposed to be angsty. I'M SORRY😭


End file.
